How to make your own Ring Racer

[ArtoMeister]

ArtoMeister submitted a new resource:

How to make your own Ring Racer - A guide on making a racer for DRRR

Greetings, I'm ArtoMeister, and I've been making various mods for Ring Racers ever since Kart Krew allowed us to tinker with the game and submit them. Today I would like to show you folks the process of making and implementing racers, followers, and custom colors into the game itself.

Just to be clear, this is a guide on how to implement the racers into the game, not a guide on drawing. If you're looking for feedback and guides on how to improve your pixel art, I would suggest you look...

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[Diskette Projector]

Very great guide, but i would like to add 2 things:

Firstly, the guide doesn't help me how to create sprites for your racer, that respects the limited color-range of the game (which afaik, is only 8-bit aka 256 colors), compared to your standard 32-bit (aka 65k colors) in image editors. I have Photoshop, and i am able to set up a forced color range, but i would need their exact RGB (or H/L/S) values, or some other methods of creating sprites for the exact range, to not risk miscoloration or unwanted artifacts when importing them to the game. (also alternatively, the guide can also suggest a better image editing software that works better for games with retro color-ranges)

Secondly, as far as i'm aware, the chosen Rivals that show up in Grand Prix according to the S_SKIN file, and the CPU racers gaining the "RIVAL" status is independent. From my experience, at the start of the second race and onward, whoever is first among the CPUs (excluding the player, in which case if the player is first, second place is chosen) is chosen with the RIVAL status. It can be anyone, doesn't necessarily applies to Rivals set in S_SKIN.

 

[MrAutumnMoss]

Hello! Your guide is very helpfull however i'm having a small problem...
I made all the necessary stuff, but when i tried to drag my character's folder into kartmaker it read all the files and the sprites alright except when it appeared "Adding sprites to WAD..." with a text below: "Lump STINA1" and then the program closes. I made sure that all the files were named correctly but it's still not working, could you help me?

 

[PetMudstone]

This is a pretty useful guide, but it would be nice to have example spritesheets that don't just have empty karts as are included in Kartmaker's file. A friend of mine is interested in making sprites for a character with an asymmetrical design and neither of us really understand how each template is differentiated and what exact sprite needs to be included in each box.

 

[slippery sancocho]

I have some questions about sprite coloring and the palette. I asked this in a different thread just now, but I also wanna post it here just in case:

When determining the paintable regions of a sprite, I usually convert any shade belonging to the other 16-color rows of the palette (like the 32-47 or 144-159 ranges) to the corresponding shade of green sharing the same column. But what if the non-paintable shade belongs to an 8-color row like 64-71 or 208-215? Or either of the two 4-color rows and the two 12-color ones? Should I still change it to the shade of green below or above it on the palette, or is there another method/rule of thumb I'm missing for this case?

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This is a pretty useful guide, but it would be nice to have example spritesheets that don't just have empty karts as are included in Kartmaker's file. A friend of mine is interested in making sprites for a character with an asymmetrical design and neither of us really understand how each template is differentiated and what exact sprite needs to be included in each box.

There already is a template for assymetrical sprites. Kaleb_Advent made it themself and posted it in the same thread I mentioned above. However, I want to point out that the reference sprites for the glance/drift rows are in the wrong order. They should not be arranged like this:

Because otherwise your character will look at the camera like a moron every time you drift. Instead, they should be arranged like this:

 

[ArtoMeister]

I have some questions about sprite coloring and the palette. I asked this in a different thread just now, but I also wanna post it here just in case:

When determining the paintable regions of a sprite, I usually convert any shade belonging to the other 16-color rows of the palette (like the 32-47 or 144-159 ranges) to the corresponding shade of green sharing the same column. But what if the non-paintable shade belongs to an 8-color row like 64-71 or 208-215? Or either of the two 4-color rows and the two 12-color ones? Should I still change it to the shade of green below or above it on the palette, or is there another method/rule of thumb I'm missing for this case?

It is not necessary to use all 16 shades of green. Just as long as the planned painted area is large and noticeable enough around the racer, applying any amount of green colors is fine.

Even if a character uses as little as two shades of green, as long as it's noticeable and obvious where the racer is paintable, it doesn't matter how little green shades you use.